The minister was speaking at a conclave on financial inclusion organised by United Nations on Wednesday.
About 30 crore families have got bank accounts since the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) three years ago, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday. "About 42 per cent of households were unbanked before the scheme was launched," he added.
PMJDY aims to give every household access to banking facilities by offering them zero-balance accounts across all commercial banks. Over three years, the number of zero-balance accounts has reduced from 77 per cent to 20 per cent and even these would become operational once the direct benefit transfer is expanded, he said.
The minister was speaking at a conclave on financial inclusion organised by United Nations on Wednesday.
He also said that the Aadhaar law will pass the test of constitutionality as it has adequate safeguards for data protection. "Aadhaar was an evolving idea under the previous UPA regime and it did not have legislative backing. BJP-led NDA gave it a legislative cover with iron wall to ensure data protection and privacy," Jaitley said. "A legislation was necessary, and because of evolving debate, the confidentiality of the data and [the need] to build some ironwall around the data itself. The legislation has been passed and I am sure it will stand the test of constitutionality."
The Supreme Court, in its recent judgement, talked about reasonable restrictions while upholding the idea of privacy as an important constitutional guarantee under Article 21 of the Constitution, he said.
Citing some of the conditions on privacy, the Finance Minister said, "They have to be by the law. They have to obviously be reasonable and some illustrative restraints, not exhaustive, are in the larger interest of national security or for the purposes of detection of crime or for the purpose of dissemination of social benefits.
"I think the third criteria is very consciously inserted because that is the principle purpose and that is where the interplay of over a billion Aadhaar numbers over a billion bank accounts and mobile phones has an important role," he said.
The comments came amid a legal challenge in the Supreme Court against making Aadhaar mandatory for government schemes. The next date of hearing is in November.
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